Many evangelical churches and most pentecostal or charismatic churches you go into today, raise their hands in worship. Like everything else in Christendom, there can be the mechanical act of doing something because it is supposed to be done, or there can be the true living dynamic response to the very presence of the Living God. Every single aspect of the natural worship of Christianity can be reduced to some dusty empty ritual that has long since replaced the living reality of God’s manifest presence. It is interesting when you watch secular concerts that you see arms aloft all over the stadium or concert hall, swaying to the rhythm of the song. Good music entertains us and can move us, Gods manifest presence invades every part of who we are and never leaves us the same. It creates in us a thirst that can never be quenched by anything other than His presence. It tears down and builds up, it raises us up from the dark valley floor to the lofty heights of His glory.
There is the presence of God to be found in glorious, enthusiastic and energetic worship, the kind of worship that lifts your spirit. It can lift up the head and invigorate the heart and fill you full of joy and you leave strengthened. This is good worship. Yet there is another kind of presence of God in worship, the kind of presence that there seems to be such a famine of throughout the land. The first kind of presence we spoke of lifts your heart, the second kind of presence invades every part of who you are. It falls from heaven like a heavy dew, heads are lowered and hands are raised. All becomes quiet, one barely breathes as the Spirit of God slowly penetrates our very being and the ground upon which we stand becomes Holy ground. It saturates our very DNA.
The first kind of presence uplifts us, the second changes us fundamentally. As living waters pour into us then it rises up like a great river that is so full that it overflows its banks. The banks themselves begin to crumble and fall into this river of pure life as it swells up and floods every part of who we are. The landscape is being changed by this flood, the very topography of our lives is being altered by its powers and everything that is not securely rooted to Godly foundations are simply swept away. Changed forever. And when the flood recedes we are left with a glorious afterglow. As the deer pants for the water-brooks, I wonder, do our hearts pant after this kind of encounter.
The Lord Himself does not need professional worship teams. He does not need people to encourage us to stand up, jump up and down and raise our hands. In the Welsh revival two young women singing either acapella or simply backed by a piano typically sang “Here is love, vast as the ocean.” And there was love, in the very midst of them, vast as the ocean, flooding the hearts and minds of all who attended. Brothers and sisters, in all our modernity, what have we lost? In the program of churches and the professional class of worshiper leaders and pastors we have lost the simplicity of it all. And in the losing of it we now have to entertain the people. Spirit led worship is exactly that, it is Spirit led.
In work we have a routine. In life we have a routine. Prisoners in prison have a routine. Oftentimes we are slaves to the routine, it is what gets us through life. Yet, there is nothing routine about the Holy Spirit of the Living God. He is dynamic and you can never know what way the wind will blow next. Have we sold our souls for a routine? Routine in the home, routine at work, routine at church. Routine people do not change the world. Routine people do not do wage war on the battle-fields of life. The Spirit of God is dynamic and those filled with His “dynamis,” change the environment around them because the environment inside them has been filled to capacity and is overflowing its banks. Lord fill us again to overflowing with the kind of presence that invades every part of who we are.
Now in the days of Gideon, a time of judgement, the Midianites and the Amikalites oppressed the children of God. No matter what the Israelites planted, they never got to see the fruits of their labor. The Midianites and the Amakilites would come in like locusts and devour and take everything. And so, Israel was greatly impoverished. Can I suggest that we face the same landscape and problems in Christendom today? We are impoverished spiritually and financially and no matter the work done, it is consumed by the idols and the enemy which seems to be all around us like locusts.
Now, in their distress, the children of Israel cried out to God for a deliverer, and the Lord sent them a prophet. The prophet reminded them of God’s faithfulness and how they had rejected Him (Jud 6:8-10) Now, at God’s appointed time, when all is desolate, He speaks to Gideon who was threshing wheat in the wine-press in an effort to hide his activities from their oppressors.(6-11) “The Lord is with you mighty man of valor.” You see how God is calling what is not as it would be. Hiding from your enemies in a defunct wine=press in an effort to get some bread is hardly the stuff of valor. Brothers and sisters, I want you to see Gideon as a type of the Remnant God is in the process of raising up right now. Do not focus on the 300 as of yet, for that is still a ways off. We as people are not ready yet. Listen to what Gideon says to the Lord.
Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye that sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves-blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do ( see Philippians 2:13) (Tozer)
Have you ever been broken down? Have you ever been totally defeated in this life? It could have been before coming to Christ, it could have happened to you after coming to Christ, but whenever it happened it left you for dead, it left you weeping. It robbed you of your song in the night, it silenced your praise, it left you hopeless for a time. It left you feeling that there was no way ahead, that everything that you ever had was lost? Inside you seemed to feel nothing.
“Our Saviors love would render the deepest ocean to but a single tear from the Masters eye. The sun that blazes brilliantly in the sky, but a spark compared to our Lords burning passion. The universe and all others combined, smaller than the smallest chamber of His heart. This is the God we serve; this is the Jesus of the Gospels; this is Jesus, God amongst us.” Read the rest of this entry »
You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today? Read the rest of this entry »
In the Old Testament, God poured out fire from heaven and we were touched by His presence. Two thousand years ago, He sent an all consuming fire to walk the earth. And although our Lord Jesus returned to His rightful place at the right hand of our Heavenly Father, the fire of our life came and dwelt in the very midst of our new hearts Read the rest of this entry »
A Call To The Remnant 